


the uses of fear

by actualromeo



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Archivist Sasha James, F/F, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Insecurity, Running Away, Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period (The Magnus Archives), but with a lesbian twist, gardening... :) also crying and awkward dinners wi your neighbor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:22:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26363374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualromeo/pseuds/actualromeo
Summary: “Miss James,” says a soft voice, right behind her. Sasha whirls around, and comes to face to face with-Annabelle.==Sasha James, Archivist, flees to Scotland with Annabelle Cane.
Relationships: Annabelle Cane/Sasha James
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	the uses of fear

**Author's Note:**

> jfkdsjge this was MEANT to be written for the touchstarved / sharp / fragile prompt in hurt/comfort week but my motivation TANKED for a lil while so this is very late. anyway, the apocalypse doesn't happen bcause these two deserve love.
> 
> this was inspired by this post: https://rubysevens.tumblr.com/post/626305514202087424/tma-isnt-abt-archivist-sasha-bc-if-shed-been-the bcause as much as i truly believe in archivist sasha being a tragedy, it DID open my eyes to the glories of sashabelle

The crowds of the train station are unusually dense, something that Sasha... chooses to take comfort in. She hefts her bags further up her shoulder and presses in through the thick of it, for once ducking her shoulders and blending in. No need to, really, when the only one she fears watching her could do so through her own eyes, but. It’s the little things.

Rush hour wasn’t when they planned this, but Sasha ran late, and then Annabelle did, and they had to reschedule the tickets entirely- and then they finally decided to trade phone numbers instead of writing handwritten letters, and rescheduled again, and again. She won’t deny the romanticism of the letters, but it’s just so much easier to plan your escape from the occult via instant messaging. After they traded numbers, two weeks of scheduling whittled down to one. And then six days, five, four, three, two, one.

And now Sasha’s here, carving her way through the crowd and forcing her eyes on the ground. She won’t watch for Annabelle. If she’s coming then she’s coming, and Sasha knows she’s coming. Supernaturally, but in her bones as well. Her human instinct.

She’s getting better at separating the two, marginally.

So she sets herself down on the bench, cramming her bags against the wall, and sighs. She’s not getting stares, at least. Perks of the London crowd: her patchwork skin of scars doesn’t stand out for longer than a few seconds. The pink hair might actually be stranger. Avoidant eyes are good for people watching, but she keeps them down still. Counts the knobs on the textured patches of ground, and compares the numbers against each other.

It goes against everything she knows, now, not to watch. She’s written about it to Annabelle, over and over. The only way I can save them is if I’m watching. Melanie would have bled out otherwise. Basira would have died.

Annabelle, of course, responded with something cynical about predestination, her coping mechanism of choice for running from her god. It’s not Schrödinger’s Cat, fate to be determined when Sasha looks. Her loved one’s deaths have been written in the Web the whole time.

Certainly makes her feel better about Tim.

(it was either her or him. it was either the world or him. it was, objectively, a sacrifice that needed to be made. jonah was baiting her into the lonely, baiting her into the end of the world--

but she still let him die. still let him rot in the lonely because she wasn’t looking.)

Even after Jon, Martin, and Daisy.. nothing hit her quite so hard as Tim. There’s something jagged in her heart where each of them were, but Tim’s gapes, empty space stabbing into her lungs when she tries to take a breath. The emotion of it all has been squeezed dry from nights of sobbing: now it’s just a physical hurt. A constant ache of loss on top of the dizziness and hunger of the Eye.

She breathes in, breathes out, steady but for the way it trembles, and fists her hands in her hair. Shorter than it used to be. She cropped it in a fit of fury a few days ago, right in front of Jonah. He’d commented on it- it’d grown since her coma- and she snapped. Picked up a knife, one of the glittering decorations on his shelves, but deathly sharp, and sawed it off.

He’d not moved to stop her, or even flinched- but he was startled, sitting dumbly in his chair. Sasha startled him. It might not have been much, but it’s... evidence that this can be done. She breathes in, breathes out, and looks up.

“Miss James,” says a soft voice, right behind her. Sasha whirls around, and comes to face to face with-

Annabelle.

She’s smiling, in the serene way that monsters smile. A little more behind the eyes, maybe, though the way her eyes are a solid, faintly gleaming black makes it hard to tell. In some ways, she doesn’t look much different from the tabloid photos she's seen from the experiment. Her skin is a couple shades darker than Sasha’s own, her face rounded and cherubic, and her hair still that bleach blonde. In the eight years that have passed since Annabelle’s Becoming, it’s grown longer, curls falling around her chin instead of buzzed near to the scalp.

“Miss Cane,” Sasha echos.

They look at each other for a moment, before something in Annabelle’s expression cracks. She jostles the suitcase at her side, and lets the smile on her face be genuine, just for a moment. “We ought to board.”

Sasha smiles back, nods once, and then turns to the train. Neither does she look back nor use her power to keep an eye on Annabelle: she doesn’t have to. Annabelle stands crowdingly close, arms bumping as they walk. It takes all of her effort not to lean into the hint of a touch as they make their way onto the train and into their room.

It’d been Annabelle’s idea to take the sleeper, and thus she bought the tickets. Sasha pauses on entry. “You got us a double bed?”

Annabelle shrugs in a way that might convince anyone else of her ease. “Figured I’d splurge,” she says. Her voice is so much softer than Sasha imagined. None of the rapture that Martin described, from his few meetings with her.

Sasha does not think about Martin.

“Fair enough.”

==

They sleep surprisingly well on the train. Not that the accommodations weren’t perfectly comfortable, or even that Sasha felt particularly unsafe with Annabelle a few inches from her side. Just that, she thought they might be more paranoid. Up watching every corner for sneaking spiders or prying eyes, sleeping in shifts. Instead they showered, and sat, and talked until they were drowsy.

Not about much, really. Anything except the future or the supernatural; the closest they veered was when Annabelle insisted Sasha talk about her own childhood, since Annabelle had written a whole statement about hers. She obliged, laying down, and with some deliberation, settled on, “I grew up around the Stranger.”

“I could tell that,” said Annabelle, amused. Sasha watched her face in the sliver of the mirror she could see as Annabelle wrapped her hair in a satin scarf.

“Marked, am I?”

“Deeply.”

Sasha hummed, and nodded. “It wasn’t exactly traumatic. Just, in hindsight,” a yawn, “The people who raised me weren’t exactly human.”

They slept surprisingly well. In the morning, Sasha dragged herself up and into the shower, to find Annabelle perched on the bed. “We’re getting room service breakfast,” she decides, and then looks at Sasha, not quite for permission.

She nods anyway. “If I have to be perceived by others, I think I’ll lose my mind.” The food isn’t great and isn’t bad, but they’re both hungry enough to order seconds and stretch the silence a little longer.

It holds until they get off the train, and Sasha pulls out the papers Basira had left about the safehouse. It’d once been Daisy’s, so Sasha holds no hopes for it’s cleanliness, but she also knows that it’s not been used in years. Basira signed over the whole place to her, when Sasha told her about the plan.

(basira sighed, tapping the pen against the table. “good luck,” she said, “for what it’s worth. i hope you can get out of here.”

“me too,” said sasha, mirthlessly. “worst to worst, i can just stab my eyes out too. hope i don’t... you know.”

“it’ll be blind ex-archival solidarity,” she nodded with a huff, saving sasha from finishing.)

By the time they pull in, Sasha’s restless to do something, limbs cramped and head aching from the vague not-quite motion sickness of being on transportation for twelve hours. “Cute,” Annabelle comments.

“Might not be on the inside. Was Daisy’s, once.”

She laughs. “A few corpses are hardly the worst surprise that could be in there.”

Stepping out and slamming the door, Sasha says, “Fair enough. Fair enough.” There’s no corpses inside, thankfully, and no grime to scrub but for the general mold and dust of disrepair. Almost wordlessly, Sasha and Annabelle slide into cleaning it up, leaving their bags in the one bedroom, with one double bed. The kitchen is stocked with enough cleaner to get the worst of it into a livable state, where Sasha’s not quite so afraid of breathing in black mold. She takes care to sweep out spiderwebs from the corners, too, and takes the odd image of the wall to poke the eyes out.

“We should garden,” says Annabelle, stepping back inside from where she was tossing the trash. “There’s a good patch of land outside.”

Sasha blinks, caught off guard, even as Annabelle is already drifting to the kitchen to keep clearing it out. “Uh, y-yeah,” she says with a nod. “That sounds- yes.” She’d forgotten that this was meant to be a long term arrangement. Running away together. It hadn’t quite seemed real until now.

Decisive, Annabelle nods. “I saw a sign about seeds at the shop we passed. We’ll pop by within a week or two.” Sasha murmurs her assent and gets back to work cleaning, but something in her aches. It’s hard to put her finger on at first, but the more she brushes absently against Annabelle, the stronger it gets. She’s been alone until now, she realizes. Been lonely.

The Archives cleared out months ago and it’d just been her down there, with Jonah stalking circles around her from management. She slept in her office at night and roamed her hallways in the day; she’d hardly seen another person since she cut down feeding. To live with Annabelle now brings something thick to her throat. To face the possibility of losing her like she did everyone else--

Sasha shakes her head. No need to mourn Annabelle prematurely. She’s not even gotten around to mourning the rest of them.

“Break time,” Sasha calls eventually. “I cleaned up the bedroom already, I think we can handle leaving it like this for today.”

“You can break,” says Annabelle. “I’ll be up in a bit.” Her smile is inhuman as it ever is when she looks up. “I’ve lived in worse places, but that doesn’t mean I’d like to.”

“Fair enough,” she responds. She’s been saying that a lot, but it’s nice, in a way. That she can afford to assent, instead of having to fight with teeth on every little thing.

Sasha watches Annabelle a little longer, in a button top rolled up to the elbows and plaid trousers as she’s clearing out whatever gunk is in the sink, and then goes up to the bedroom.

==

They do go out to the store the next day. Though the cottage was fully stocked when they arrived, it was all years expired, and they’d had to run out to refill it. Sasha kept one arm in Annabelle’s as they walked through the aisles, tethering each other. Their little village is just little enough that either of them running off to cause trauma would be a problem. A moral one, too, but Sasha is too tired to wrestle with that. She wrestled with it the last six months, the last three years, too long to care now.

She can play damage control the best she can, but she can’t starve herself to protect someone else, and that’s that. Though she won’t deny her curiosity, how Annabelle feels about the whole thing.

Annabelle’s been strange, the whole time, in a... well. In a strange way. She gets up an hour after Sasha every morning and they bicker about breakfast before settling into whatever they each do for the day, and then Annabelle cooks dinner. Sasha hasn’t noticed any arsenic nor spiders in her food, so that’s all normal. Their routine is fine, it’s just- the way Annabelle walks through it, really.

She slips in and out of attention, staring out absently for stretches of time, and moves like a doll. Not a puppet, quite, but a brittle porcelain doll with a fixed smile and limbs that shriek when they move. Her halting, double-jointed gait and black eyes that nobody seems to notice sell the image of something simply strange.

Sasha doesn’t mind, necessarily. She’s sure she acts strange as well, mindlessly sorting and checking and cleaning and fidgeting to keep her mind occupied against the stream of knowledge. Locking herself in closets to ensure no eyes can get to her. Shutting down her own nervous system so she doesn’t collapse under the strain of grief and simple longing for comfort. But it is strange, and she does wonder. She wants to ask, but there feels like a gap between them, and she can’t bring herself to.

It turns out there’s not a lot they can plant this late into October, so Annabelle sighs theatrically and slips two books on gardening into their bag, determined to be ready for the next season. Sasha picks up her own books, whatever catches her fancy in the limited selection, and Annabelle picks up some needles and spare thread.

Like that, they fall into another pattern. Little hobbies to keep themselves occupied through their now very empty days- mostly Sasha reads and Annabelle fiddles, but they switch it up. They take plenty of walks in the cool autumn air, and the neighbors start to take notice.

Really, the first time they realize they aren’t just alone was when their nearest neighbor comes and knocks on the door one cool afternoon, bearing a pan of brownies. Sasha was reading upstairs and only realized it when Annabelle’s voice rang out, cloyingly sweet. She flinches, a little. The way Annabelle talks to strangers is very... It reminds Sasha of spiders.

She tucks her book under her arm and goes downstairs to find Annabelle making small talk with their older neighbor, in his sixties but still fit. The smile on his round face reminds her of Martin.

“It’s nice to have new people in the area,” he says, while Annabelle brews him tea. Sasha’s already forgotten his name, quiet. “I love this town, but we could use a little excitement, now and again.”

Annabelle laughs, and the noise grates on Sasha’s ears in a strange way. A way that makes her want to hug her, a desire so sudden and sharp that she tears up. “I think we’ve had enough of that,” she says, brown-sugar friendly. The moment the old man leaves, Sasha finds herself pressed to Annabelle’s side. “You alright?” asks Annabelle, after a moment of Sasha’s cling. She doesn’t try to extract herself but Sasha loosens her grip enough that she could.

“Bad day,” Sasha says vaguely, though it wasn’t before. Achy and tired, but not bad. Annabelle’s arms are nice, though.

She doesn’t question it then, just nodding and allowing Sasha to hang off her elbow, but it worsens day by day. Annabelle casts Sasha with questioning looks each morning, when she stays in bed later and takes parcementol by the handful.

Eventually, Sasha realizes. She’s hungry. Not ravenous, but gnawing. The statements she packed were thinning out, and she’s had to start waiting for Basira to try and send a package up. Years spent in the Archives, bearing the consequences of diving headfirst into monsterhood, taught her how to manage the hunger, but Scotland is throwing her off.

She misses the walls of the Archives around her, familiar and intrinsically hers.

After the third week of staring longingly at strangers in town, Sasha stammers it out. “I can’t, um. I don’t think I should go out today.”

“Rain check on the grocery trip?” Annabelle asks from the doorway, where she’s already donning her jacket. Annabelle tends to steamroll things like that, make a decision and expect Sasha to go along with it. She never insists if Sasha protests, and so it’s... nice. The right side of the line between assertive and controlling, just barely.

She figures it’s how Annabelle copes. Control, and all. “It’s bad,” she admits. “The hunger.”

“Ah.”

“You can go out without me. I’ll just, um. Stay in today. Don’t want to risk...”

Annabelle narrows her eyes, and then nods, heading out to town as promised.

When she’s gone, Sasha feels off-balance, uncertain. Oddly convinced that Annabelle is angry, in such a stupid, nerve-wracking way. The Eye calls at her, tugs deep in her belly for her to check, to skim Annabelle’s mind and then find a handhold and pry, but she doesn’t.

The anxiety is humanizing, in a way, so she keeps it. Stews in it. Even if she feels nauseated by the time Annabelle gets home from the thought-spirals and headaches.

When the door opens again, the first thing Annabelle says is: “I saw a cat.”

Sasha jerks her head up and finds Annabelle smiling. It’s unfamiliar, for a moment, as she echos, “A cat?”

“In town. Thought it was a stray,” she settles at the foot of the couch. “I’m more of a rodent person myself, but I know you like them. I wasn’t planning on adopting it or anything, but I figured... we get a foster while we find it’s owner, I get to watch you fuss over a cat, we do a good deed, you know?”

“Did you bring home a cat?”

Annabelle laughs. “No. Turns out it belongs to the bookstore’s owner, and I might have... accidentally tried to kidnap it.” Finally, it clicks. Her smile. It’s not- it’s nice. Not the blinding gossamer thing it usually is. She keeps telling the story, and it’s not exactly a statement, but the new stimulus at least distracts her from the pain.

That night they go to bed with a list of pros and cons for various pets: Annabelle really does want a rat, one day, but Sasha thinks something more playful like a ferret would be better if they want a cage pet. “Rat-phobic,” Annabelle accuses kindly as they stumble into the bedroom.

“I’m not- that’s not even a word,” Sasha yawns, burying her head under the pillow. “Turn down the blinds.”

They crawl into bed and fall into sleep, though Sasha’s is fitful and light. Her head still pounds with the inhuman urge in her gut, her heart, her head, and she wakes up in a sweaty haze, uncomfortably warm. When she goes to kick the comforter off, she finds it’s not the blankets she’s entangled in, but Annabelle’s arms. And legs. And half her torso, draped over Sasha’s. Blinking hazily, she lets her eyes adjust to the light.

Annabelle looks peaceful, asleep. Exhausted, withdrawn, but peaceful. With her hair wrapped up, the stitching of spiderweb over her temple is clear, and Sasha brings one hand up to graze the edges. Some strage grief fills Sasha, looking at her. She’s a monster. Someone who feeds on trauma. Who has fear quite literally stitching her together.

Sasha is a monster too, as the dizzy ache in her soul makes clear. She might not have Annabelle’s iridescent spider’s eyes, or her cobweb skull, but the Eye is the only thing that keeps her heart beating, now.

The thread can’t be very thick, on her skull. Sasha could reach in, could plunge her hand right into Annabelle’s brain matter. Kill her before she even realizes.

It’d be a mercy to the world, if they both died. Two less monsters to roam the Earth.

(”they’re so much friendlier than mice! they’re just giant babies,” annabelle cooed.

“i don’t understand how you can hate mice and love rats. they’re practically the same animal.”

she sighed, theatrical and put-upon. “you’re just wrong, love.”)

Her hand trails down from Annabelle’s temple down to her side, cool against her warm palm. This, with her smile and rats and story of ‘strays,’ Sasha realizes, is the first time she’s seen Annabelle. Sharp, cold smiling Annabelle- is someone that she cares about, but someone who the world would be better without. This is not that Annabelle. This is the Annabelle that she wrote letters to, that she ran away with.

This Annabelle does not deserve to die.

Sasha buries her head in the junction of her shoulder, and hopes that she doesn’t deserve to die either.

==

In the morning, the worst of it has passed. It’ll be back, but Sasha’s been through this before, and waking up to a clear head and no ache in her muscles is a relief. She’s alone in the bed, Annabelle’s side already made with crisp corners.

Sasha picks up a savory scent as she walks out of the room, hearing faint fizzling as she rubs her eyes. “Are you cooking?” she calls, pitching her voice just enough to be heard through the whole cottage. It’s not a big place, small and cozy. Something sick and cold still sits in her gut, but trailing her hand along the walls makes her feel a little better. They’re hers. Like the Archive, this is a place where she is safe.

“Bacon,” Annabelle confirms, back to Sasha when she enters. “Good morning.” Sasha slumps her head onto the table, just listening to her Annabelle’s soft humming. Only when a plate is set in front of her does she look up.

For a second, Annabelle's expression is neutral, with a softness in the eyes, but after a moment she splits into that facade of a smile. Sasha winces, but she holds that softness close.

Something stays rotten in Sasha’s chest, in the following days. A pervasive sense of discomfort and unease and- mourning. For what? She mourned her humanity ages ago, and this is supposed to be getting it back. This should be the best Sasha’s felt for years.

Instead she feels cold and sort of distant, like even pressed to Annabelle’s side, there’s a cavern between them.

Within the week Sasha learns from Annabelle that their neighbor’s name is Cathy, and that he is insistent on getting closer to them. He’s invited them to dinner, actually, which Annabelle says with a half-frown. “I’m honestly not sure if he’s being weird or not.”

“No,” confirms Sasha, feeling his intentions in her ocular nerve. “Genuinely just nice. Do you want to go?”

Annabelle shrugs, frowns, and then nods. So they go.

Cathy is as kind and friendly as ever, and he beams when Sasha actually speaks to him- it occurs to her belatedly that she’d been acting a little odd in her silence. “It’s good to see you both again!” he chirps, heading back to the kitchen to serve their food. “I think it’s nice to have young people in the area again. At this rate, we might as well be dying off!”

The conversation picks up with Annabelle and her strings, and Sasha falls naturally into silence, devouring the food. Cathy is a good cook, and the lack of routine means Sasha’s eating habits have fallen into disrepair. It feels fake. The whole thing feels fake, there are cobwebs dusted in the corner of his home and strings tied around Annabelle’s wrist and Sasha is held up by one, fraying thread. She feels like they’re lying to this poor man, like she’s pasted a human skin on top of monstrosity.

She wants to hold Annabelle so badly that it hurts. Her thoughts center in on this one desire to shunt out the ones about monstrosity, a last bid to keep her from tilting over the edge into panic.

Under the table, Annabelle takes her hand. It doesn’t help. She doesn’t get it, she doesn’t understand what Annabelle is.

Swallowing down tears, she just listens to the conversation, tries to drown out the stones in her gut. It goes on a little while, Sasha quiet, until Cathy asks, “You said you’re brought here from London? Just what was so awful down there anyway?”

Annabelle laughs, but Sasha realizes immediately- she doesn’t have an answer. Her days were spent in various less than legal Web hotspots, and she’s not great at lying. For all her supernatural ability to pull strings months and years in advance, a simple on the spot fib throws her off. “Not much,” she finds herself saying. “Just shitty job situations. The opportunity arose, and we figured... might as well get out, you know?”

Cathy nods sagely. “This is why I’m retired.”

“The only reason, I’m sure,” Sasha jokes weakly.

“That and shitty bosses.”

She can’t help it: she barks a laugh. “Ah, that too.”

The dinner doesn’t take too long. Sasha still feels worse and worse, a crawling feeling along her skin and something thick in her sinuses, so Annabelle bids them leave as soon as possible. “Hope to see you around again,” Cathy says in goodbye, giving Sasha a gentle clap on the shoulder. It’s tinged with concern, and Sasha really hopes she hasn’t made this man feel bad with her pitiful act of humanity.

In the walk home, Annabelle’s fingers lace with hers again, and it aches somewhere deep in Sasha. It’s too dark out for it to be a problem, but she looks out into the fields when tears start pricking in her eyes anyway. Light still peeks out from the horizon, but only just, dappling the sky orange in the west and black in the east. They get a few minutes into the walk home before Annabelle asks, just quietly, “Are you alright?”

“I’m okay,” she says immediately, even around the wave of sick anxiety. What are they doing? What are they doing here? She wants to cling to Annabelle, but she doesn’t know if she’s going to get bitten. If she’ll bite herself.

“You’re sure?” asks Annabelle, thumb rubbing on the back of her hand. Sasha doesn’t look back at her: she doesn’t want to see spiders.

It takes a few seconds for her to gather herself. When she feels like she can speak without dumping the weight of the world onto Annabelle’s shoulders, she opens her mouth. “Are we,” she swallows. “Are we supposed to be human?”

The wind blows between them, and Sasha edges closer instinctively. Their hands are cramped between them. “Well. Not based on our circumstances,” Annabelle says.

“But you- we. We’re supposed to be human now. We wanted to... work on it.”

“You’re still hungry, I take it?”

“No,” Sasha says, shaking her head. “I mean, yes, but that’s not... You always look--” Tears blur her vision like it’s watercolor painted, and when they spill her sight clears. All the sudden she needs to know, and spins on her heel to face Annabelle. “You always look like you’re--”

First her eyes land on the cobwebs, barely visible under her hair and only noticeable to a knowing eye. Then her eyes drift down to Annabelle’s face. It’s soft and neutral and... human. Christ. Sasha doesn’t know what she’s so upset about.

A wave of guilt crashes, foam lapping up to drown her. “I’m sorry,” Sasha says, in the stretching silence. “That wasn’t fair of me.” She wants to be held. She wants Annabelle to hold her.

“It’s okay,” says Annabelle quietly. Her free hand reaches up to wipe at Sasha’s eyes, though her expression is guarded. “Don’t cry, please. We have been doing what we need- I. I have been doing what I need to survive.”

The conversation halts there, as Sasha buckles under another round of sobs and Annabelle loops an arm around to support her. Crying makes her head pound, which has the positive of quieting the voice calling her pathetic and the negative of making the lights of the cabin painful when they arrive.

Annabelle tugs Sasha forward slowly, then more brazen as Sasha leans in for the comfort. They tumble across the couch, sprawled atop each other. Sasha tenses, guilty, feeling wrong at the joints and like she’s going to hurt her somehow. “Sh,” Annabelle soothes, and Sasha collapses entirely.

“I’m sorry,” she manages again. “I’m sorry, I’m-- It’s just bad.”

“It is,” Annabelle sighs. Hands stroke up and down Sasha’s back, shifting to make them each more comfortable. “But we can fix it. That’s why we came out here, isn’t it?” Sasha drifts into the warmth and comfort. “It’s not reasonable to expect it to just be better like magic. That type of magic doesn’t exist.”

It’s so perfect, the soothing ache of words Sasha needed to hear. So exact that it scares her. “Why are we so inhuman?” she pleads into the warmth between their bodies. “I can’t be around people without wanting to rip their trauma out and you,” she pulls back to search Annabelle’s face, trying to put the words to the tranquility in her. The idyllic look that screams danger, inhuman, in tones that only resonate inside monsters. “You’re not doing it right now.”

“What was I doing?” Annabelle asks.

“You’re... you walk around so,” Sasha swallows. “Like the spider’s perfect puppet. I, I understand it. I’m not human either. I just,” she stares. “I don’t know what we’re trying to be here. We ran away from our patrons and yet we’re still just monsters.”

“You’re not,” she snaps, on the tails of Sasha’s miserable sigh. Sasha meets her eyes. “You were manipulated.”

“You were too.” Annabelle is so wound tight, she sees now. Tense, almost fragile. She has so little muscle, almost waifish where she holds Sasha close. The points of contact make Sasha breathe easier.

“I was,” she admits reluctantly. “I was something else for longer than you, too. And now I’m not sure how to be human.” She makes an unhappy noise, head turning to avoid Sasha’s gaze. “I don’t know how to be. Vulnerable, like this. I’ve been upsetting you.”

“No--”

Annabelle hushes her. “Watching me not try at humanity makes you feel like a monster by association.” Which... yeah. Kind of. Sasha goes lightheaded with the shame of it; Annabelle is not a monster, Annabelle is a victim of the Mother pulled into committing atrocities, but. It still makes Sasha feel monsterous.

Hitting the nail on the head once again. Annabelle tugs Sasha in so that they don’t have to look at each other, laying Sasha’s head on her chest as she continues, “I am trying, though. I don’t do things like stitch, or garden, or... you know. Hobbies.” A pause. “I mean, I didn’t. I’m trying to pick those up. Hobbies seemed like a normal, human thing to do.

“See what I mean? I don’t understand what it means to be human anymore.” She laughs, hollow, into Sasha’s hair. “So I’m sorry.”

Sasha shakes her head, considering. “Don’t be. I don’t regret this, running away with you is still the best decision I’ve ever made. I just don’t want to be alone, or a monster.”

“We should talk it out sometime,” she suggests quietly. “What humanity is. What we’re doing here. Boundaries.”

With a heavy sigh, Annabelle agrees. The silence bubbles between them and stretches long, but Sasha feels settled. Letting go of Annabelle is unthinkable, and if she’s honest, she feels like she might collapse if she stands. “Do you want to sleep?” Annabelle eventually asks, quiet.

“Here? On the couch?” The lights are still on. Sasha still has on her shoes and her nice clothes.

“Yeah.”

So they sleep.

==

In the morning, Sasha climbs off Annabelle and cleans herself up, makes tea, breakfast, and still has time to seat herself at the table with Annabelle’s embroidery kit before the other wakes up. She’s never embroidered before, but she likes picking up new things and remembers needlework faintly from grade school.

When Annabelle wakes, there’s a few new closed eyes in the cuff of her jacket. She hears her before she sees her, and waits patiently for Annabelle to come to the kitchen. The feeling of awkward tension floats through the house. The breeze it drifts in on is pleasantly cool, though, and Sasha is bundled in a nice sweater, and so doesn’t have room in her to feel anxious.

Stumbling into the kitchen still groggy, Annabelle’s expression is blank. No placid smile or knowing glint to her eyes. She doesn’t smile as she thanks Sasha for breakfast either, just a soft, fond look crossing her face. Sasha recognizes it, not as humanity but Annabelle’s direct attempt at not being inhuman.

They eat in silence, and have the mentioned talk the next week. It’s long and unbearably awkward until they give up pretenses and curl together on the bed, tucked into each other’s laps as they whisper what being human means to them. It involves a fine line between morality and starvation.

Then, mostly, they try things.

Together they pick up knitting and race to see who can get a hold of it fastest. Annabelle wins the race with her prior crafting experience, but Sasha gets intricate patterns beamed into her mind to stitch on as fast as she can. It makes for sloppy but detailed work, and Annabelle likes it. Eventually, she makes enough loose fabric rectangles that Annabelle collects them and knits them into a patchwork scarf that she wears all winter long.

She smiles more, by winter. Awkward, like she’s not sure she’s doing it right, but there’s none of the inhumanity that Sasha now knows to be a mask. Just... happiness.

It burns something in Sasha, so much so that she blurts, “Can I kiss you?” one day, out behind the house. Sasha’s gotten into throwing knives, and Annabelle can’t help but showboat her superior aim.

Annabelle blinks once, and Sasha is so scared-- but then she smiles again. One of those beautiful, sweet smiles, and nods, so Sasha kisses her. So giddily that she forgets she’s got a knife in her hand and almost stabs her in the shoulder. Annabelle laughs about it and kisses her right back.

They talk about that, too, a week later, but there’s not much to be discussed. ‘You and I’ becomes ‘we,’ and Sasha kisses Annabelle good morning, good afternoon, and goodnight, but not a lot changes else.

In spring, Annabelle heads out to the shop again, alone: it’s a bad day for Sasha, so she stays in and fusses with the painting she’s had spread out on the dining table for two weeks. A big, sprawling piece that Sasha’s taken on before she really has the skills to, but that’s alright. It’s not a hunger thing, though she struggles with that still, coming bouts that always bring back the same old inhuman insecurities.

No, today it’s her joints. They’re wrecked from years of fending off the supernatural untrained and untreated, and they ache in waves. Annabelle brings home her favorites and cooks for the night, beaming privately to herself.

Sasha finds out why at dinner, when Annabelle pulls out a big basket. It’s filled to the brim with gardening supplies, seeds and planters of every variety.

They kneel together in the dirt when the time rolls around, no gloves and one spade between them. Annabelle admits her mistake on not buying a second and cedes the thing to Sasha, digging choosing to prep and plant where Sasha digs.

There’s no order, no rhyme or reason to the plants- raspberries and chrysanthemums and parsley and tulips all spread around the back perimeter of the house. Neither of them are really sure it’ll grow, with no plant experience, but they sit in the grass after anyway, talking about their garden blooming red and green and cooking with things from nature.

As the sun sets behind them, Annabelle leans in to brush her lips to Sasha’s temple. Then she jerks back, shrieking, as Sasha smears dirt across her cheek.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading this <3 it was not edited as closely as i should have so pls point out any clear mistakes haha


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